


Beyond the Ninth Wave

by Dolorosa



Category: Wise Child Series - Monica Furlong
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-01 04:33:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2759738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolorosa/pseuds/Dolorosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being driven from their home by Fillan Priest, Juniper and Wise Child adjust to a new life on Finbar's ship. Post-<em>Wise Child</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond the Ninth Wave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madamebadger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamebadger/gifts).



I.

It had been two hours since they climbed aboard Finbar’s ship, and Juniper was worried. After her initial exultation, Wise Child had grown silent, sitting in the prow, her face pinched with anxiety. One of Finbar’s men had given her a piece of dried fish, which she chewed listlessly between lips dried and cracked from the salty air. The island which Wise Child had named as Tír na nÓg slid by on their western side, but she seemed to have no enthusiasm to stand next to Juniper and peer at its craggy cliffs and secluded, white sandy beaches.

Juniper dropped to the deck of the ship, crouching so that she was close to Wise Child’s height.

‘It’s the uncertainty of it all, isn’t it, Wise Child?’ said Juniper. ‘Heading north on a ship of strangers — and Finbar is a stranger to you right now — leaving behind your cousins and your books and Pearl and Ruby, your home and herbs, the cyclical certainty of work well done, and of the seasons. It’s not easy. Sometimes it’s hard to adjust to seeing movement as safety.’

Wise Child gave a tight little nod, then lowered her head onto Juniper’s shoulder. Juniper wrapped her arms around Wise Child, took the fish from the girl’s trembling hands, and thought about stillness. The sea sighed around them. After several moments, Wise Child relaxed into sleep.

II.

‘You haven’t yet asked me where we’re going,’ Finbar whispered, his back against the prow as he leaned down towards Juniper.

‘I assumed you’d tell us once we were on the open ocean, out of sight of the island and sure that we were not being pursued. Besides, it’s Wise Child who will be helped most by knowing our destination.’ Juniper gestured to the sleeping figure next to her.

At the mention of his daughter, Finbar’s eyes grew sad.

‘Is she still the same as when I left her?’

‘Only you could possibly ask such a question! Life on the island may have moved too slowly for you to notice it — you always were restless — but I assure you there is no way that Wise Child could have lived it, lived this last year, and remained unchanged.’

III.

The autumnal sun illuminated a hive of activity. _The Holy Trinity_ was anchored in a secluded bay, and a group of Finbar’s men were in the process of rowing out to the ship, their small vessel loaded with water that they had collected from a creek that tumbled over rocky cliffs into the open ocean south of the bay. Finbar himself was retrieving precious stores of salt, fish and grain from a cache in which he had hidden them on an earlier trip. A pair of his men — Cornish natives who knew of Juniper’s parents and spoke to her in reverent tones — were gathering driftwood for a fire.

Juniper and Wise Child stood barefoot on the tideline, their skirts hitched around their hips, bent double, gathering kelp, cockles and scallops into baskets tied to their waists. It was tiring work, and Juniper had kept her silence initially, taking Wise Child’s lead. To her surprise, however, Wise Child seemed to have lost her earlier reticence, and was chattering away, her speech peppered with navigational terms she seemed to have picked up from Finbar.

‘Do you know where we’re going?’ Wise Child asked, her eyes shining. ‘Finbar managed to set up a trade route with the Northmen. We’re going to follow the mainland north as far as it goes, and then make the crossing! One of Finbar’s men — you know, Declan, that old man from the Western Isles — used to sail with a Norse crew and he’s made that crossing enough times to know the safest routes. Finbar’s going to trade Cornish tin and amber for skins and furs, and if it goes well, he’ll add the Norse lands to his regular trade circuit!’

‘Do you mind travelling for so long, going so far north? It’s a hard life on a ship for a child — and for a _doran_. It’s hard for us to be away from the land, from the earth and fresh water and growing things. The sea is so changeable and unpredictable. It has its own power.’

‘I think,’ said Wise Child in a serious voice, ‘that I would like to keep moving, to keep travelling for a little while. I mean, it will be nice to cook fresh fish on the fire and sleep off the ship tonight, but I feel safer the more distance we put between Fillan Priest and us. It would be nice just to disappear into the ocean for a while.’

Juniper scooped a final handful of kelp into her basket.

‘I understand,’ she said.

IV.

Most of the men had chosen to go back to the ship to sleep (‘they feel safer on the sea than on the land,’ Finbar had said), but Juniper and Wise Child had remained in the bay, knowing it would be their last night on land for quite some time. A driftwood fire was slowly burning itself to embers before them, and the smell of grilled fish lingered in the air. Juniper had taken the opportunity to bathe in the creek, and was hoping that her damp hair would dry before the fire burnt itself out.

‘The herbs are different here,’ said Wise Child, ‘but I managed to gather some mint and cow-parsley and sea-moss. Do you think it will be enough for the journey, if someone gets ill?’

‘I don’t know, Wise Child. I have never been further north than this, and we do have a great way to go. I do know those herbs will be a great help, but I also think you are worrying too much about being prepared and ready to face everything. There’s a kind of earth-magic in that — it’s the way things work on land, where gathering herbs, stacking up peat for fuel, pickling fruit and drying meat is a source of power, a way to use your knowledge against the bite of winter — but the sea has a way of sweeping that all away. Part of being a _doran_ is learning what you cannot prepare for, and accepting that.’

Wise Child’s eyes followed the sparks as they drifted upwards into the clear, dark sky.

‘Was I wrong to take those herbs, then?’ she asked.

‘Never,’ said Juniper. ‘Just try to understand why you took them.’

V.

As they travelled north, Wise Child and Juniper fell into a daily routine. They would wake with the sun, and break their fast with some of the tough, dry, grainy biscuits, washed down with cups of carefully hoarded, precious fresh water. Their mornings would be spent at lessons, huddled in quiet corners of _The Holy Trinity_. Juniper drew the inspiration for these from the sea and sky, and from the myriad languages they heard spoken by the crew — Irish and English and Cornish and odd sprinklings of words from lands far to the south and east, picked up on journeys long ago. Wise Child’s accent soon took on a more international tone, and her speech was peppered with words of sailing and navigation that Juniper had never before encountered.

The two of them spent their afternoons patching and repairing, sewing sails, plaiting ropes, and checking up on the food stores, stacks of biscuits in barrels, and fish strung up in gleaming, silvery rows to dry. The kelp they had collected in the bay had been stretched out to dry, and would be worked into the next batch of biscuits they made.

Juniper also used this time to walk the ship with Finbar, treading a careful path from stern to prow, taking note of any weak spots in the planking or potential ruptures in the joints. Finbar used his sense of touch to seek out weaknesses in the wood, running his hands along the smooth planks of oak before pointing them out to Juniper. Juniper’s method was different. She had a feel for the trees the wood had once been, and was able to draw on this to sense where things had gone wrong. A few soft words, a touch of the hand to the source of the problem, and, occasionally, hammer or saw, and the pair were able to mend any potential problems before things got dangerous.

The sun set early at that time of year, so Juniper and Wise Child ate their evening meal early, joining the crew for dried fish, scallops and sips of the last of their summer beer. At night there were songs and stories. Jann, one of the Breton crew members, had a hand-drum and a small tin whistle, and Hadir, who spoke Irish but came from the warm lands around the Mediterranean Sea, had a set of pipes, and the pair of them would accompany any singing with great enthusiasm.

Before they curled up to sleep in a warm corner of the storeroom, Wise Child would solemnly go through her stores of herbs, which she had hung up to dry next to the fish. She kept a careful tally of every twig and stalk, every leaf and root, every thoroughly ground seed. There had not yet been much call to use the herbs, aside from a couple of headaches and a nasty cut Finbar had accidentally inflicted on himself with a careless slash of his fish knife.

Juniper had feared that the strangeness of it all would keep Wise Child from sleeping easily, but the girl learned to count the waves as they slapped against the ship, lulling her into rest until her eyes closed and dreams claimed her.

VI.

When Wise Child and Juniper emerged from below decks they noticed that every man of Finbar’s crew was peering anxiously skywards. Although it was only mid-morning, the sun’s light had completely vanished, and the sky was an angry shade of greyish-purple. The wind appeared to be picking up, and the deck heaved and pitched over rough waters.

‘Storm’s coming in fast,’ said old Declan, as he lashed loose objects to the deck with thick rope, his hands sure and steady.

‘Are there no bays nearby that we could go to and wait it out?’ asked Wise Child in a quavering voice.

Juniper shot her a look of concern. The girl had grown in confidence every day she spent on the ship, but Juniper was suddenly reminded just how very young she was, and how small she seemed standing on a tiny craft among the choppy waves.

‘We’re too far out from land,’ Declan said. ‘All we can do is tie everything down, go below and wait it out.’

As if to underscore his words, a particularly strong gust of wind whipped around suddenly, tangling Juniper’s skirt and blowing Wise Child’s hair into her eyes. A flash of lightening was followed by a resounding crack of thunder, ushering in the first of the rain.

‘Finish up on deck and then get below as quickly as possible!’ shouted Finbar over the roar of the wind as he bounded down from the prow, where he had been scanning the horizon.

Wise Child clutched Juniper’s hand.

‘I’m frightened,’ she said.

Juniper ushered her towards the ladder as the rain began to beat against the deck in earnest.

‘I know, Wise Child,’ she said. ‘Sometimes there’s nothing to do about fear besides accept it and try to distract yourself. Once we’re warm and dry, I’ll tell you a story, and that will help you take your mind off things. And today seems like a good time to break out that spiced apple drink that we made all those weeks ago at the bay. Food and drink are the best distraction of all.’

VII.

‘So, how about that story?’ said Juniper some time later, after they had both stripped off their wet clothes, wrapped themselves in scratchy blankets and settled in a corner of the hold, huddled together, clutching rough earthenware mugs of apple drink.

Wise Child’s eyes were huge under her damp black fringe, and her teeth were chattering, but she nodded.

‘This is a story from the south-western part of Ireland. I heard it many years ago when I went there in my wandering with Trewyn, my sister- _doran_ -in-training. In the early years of our adulthood we spent several years roaming around Ireland, Brittany, Cornwall and the lands of the English, healing the sick and helping the people in other ways. We wanted adventures, but what we ended up getting were a great many stories.’

For a moment, Juniper was transported back to that time, when she was young and strong, her path as sure as the ground beneath her feet, Trewyn beside her fired with youthful enthusiasm. The whole world had seemed open to them at that time, a space of hope and wonder.

Wise Child’s voice snatched Juniper out of her reverie.

‘What kind of story is it?’ she asked.

‘Why, Wise Child, it could be nothing other than a story of the sea. This is the story of the waves and the rocks and the sea shore, and a beautiful woman and the man who loved her.’

Wise Child settled back against the wall of the ship, her body already starting to relax at the sound of Juniper’s voice.

‘In the land of Deas-Mhumhain, the southernmost tip of the western part of Ireland, boundaries are thin. The lakes and rivers are dotted with little islands that appear suddenly out of the mist, and at times the land becomes waterlogged as the springs try to claim back little bits of the earth. The sea surrounds it, and encroaches always on the little beaches and strands, sweeping rocks and shells away with every tide. And, most importantly, there are points in the land which act as doorways between our reality and others.

‘One such spot is a rocky outcrop, a place on the top of a hill where scarred white stones stand out against the grey-green of the grass, the yellow gorse and the purple heather. People all around avoid it, because it is known as a route into _Tír Tairngire_ , the Land of Promise, where the fairy-folk dwell out of time and where old age and sorrow do not reach.

‘One such fairy-woman was Clíodhna. She was beautiful and dangerous like all of her kind, with long dark hair and eyes that glittered like icy blue diamonds, and a burning curiosity about our own human world. She used to sit on the outcrop of stones, hidden to human eyes, and watch the people who passed by, coaxing their cows away from the hill lest they cross into the Otherworld, singing their songs of trees and grass and stones and clear water.’

Wise Child, her mug long since discarded, leaned against Juniper, her face alert and wondering.

‘One day,’ Juniper continued, ‘Clíodhna spotted a young man. Unlike all the other people she’d seen during her long vigil from the stones, he was not hastening away, nor averting his eyes from the outcrop as if fearful of catching the attention of the fairy-folk. In fact, he was doing the exact opposite: striding up the hill, a small parcel in his hands and a purposeful expression on his face. Once he reached the hill’s rocky summit, he settled down, and began to play a wistful tune on a small pipe that he produced from a pocket.

‘Clíodhna looked at him intently. His hair was brown and curled around a pleasant, cheerful face. He was dressed as if about to embark on a long journey, with sturdy boots and trousers, and his cloak was a deep green, buckled at the shoulder with an intricately carved wooden brooch. But most striking of all were his eyes, which were a warm green colour, and alive with curiosity and wonder. He ceased playing his pipe, leaving the tune to trail off uncertainly, lingering in the air around the stones.

‘Clíodhna could bear it no longer. She took a deep breath, and stepped through into the human world.

‘For the young man, it was quite a shock. He leapt to his feet, dropping the parcel he had been carrying. Its contents — food, water flask, metal tools — spilled in a messy heap in the grass.

‘ “What is your name, mortal?” asked Clíodna. ‘And why are you here on my hill, playing music against my stones?”

‘ “I am Ciabhán, lady, and I have often passed these stones and wondered. I wondered about the worlds that lay behind them and beyond them.”

‘Clíodhna looked at him steadily.

' “Would you like to follow me through the doorway into my home beyond the stones? It is a land of promise, where there is no pain, no sickness and no death, only pleasure and plenty. It is a land out of time, where no cruelty from this world can reach you.”

‘Ciabhán listened to her words carefully, his eyes aflame with conflicting thoughts and fears. Trembling, he nodded, and Clíodhna took his hand. She led him towards the stones, and as they walked the ground beneath their feet shifted and blurred and changed, until they were no longer in any part of Deas-Mhumhain that Ciabhán recognised. He lifted his face, taking in the night sky where before it had been sunny mid-morning.

‘Clíodhna pulled him closer, and they embraced beneath the stars of another world.

‘Ciabhán’s pipe fell forgotten from his hands, as his whole world shrunk until it encompassed only the dewy ground beneath his feet, the strange air he breathed, and the woman in his arms. But just as he was starting to forget his own name, Clíodhna pulled away.

‘ “We cannot stay here,’ she said. “ _Tír Tairngire_ is not safe for you, and it is not safe for me any longer either.”’

‘Is the land of the fairies dangerous?’ asked Wise Child, unable to contain herself any longer.

‘It is not always a reality that is safe for humans who are insufficiently prepared. There are ways to prepare yourself, though,’ Juniper replied. ‘Do you want to hear what happened next?’

Wise Child nodded, and Juniper continued.

‘When Clíodhna and Ciabhán emerged, it was not on the hill with the stones, but rather on the sand of a tiny harbour. Although it had been mid-morning when they had left, it was now the late afternoon, and the sun hung heavy on the horizon, its light barely reaching them.

‘There were flecks of gold in Ciabhán’s eyes, an echo of the light of those unearthly stars.

‘ “Why did you pull me out?” he asked, his heart still racing from the combination of Clíodhna and her land.

‘ “I didn’t notice until I’d taken you in that you were wearing an iron knife at your belt. Iron is forbidden in _Tír Tairngire_ , and it causes those who live there great pain. I fear your presence was detected by those who mean you harm.”

‘ “If my knife hurts you, I will get rid of it at once,” said Ciabhán, and he threw it with great force into the harbour.

‘Clíodhna said nothing at this, but drew him away, further up the sand.

‘ “You rest here, Clíodhna,” said Ciabhán, “and I will go inland and find flint and firewood, and maybe some fresh water. It’s too late to travel.”

‘The fairy woman settled down in the sand, as the light slipped away and the sea lapped at the shore. Ciabhán darted off into the hills. He was not gone long, but when he returned, the strand was empty. The tide had risen and washed away all indents in the sand that had marked Clíodhna’s presence. Ciabhán fell to his knees and cried out his anguish. But the sea keeps its secrets, and until the end of his days, he never did discover what had become of Clíodhna.

‘Some say she slipped back into _Tír Tairngire_ , as the veil between the worlds is thin at the shoreline. Others say that Manannán, jealous of the mortal Ciabhán, had caused the tide to rise until the sea covered Clíodhna while she was sleeping, sweeping her away beneath the waves beyond mortal reach. And to this day the outcrop of stones is named for Clíodhna, a marker of that time she stepped into our world.

‘And sometimes, there is a particular type of wave that appears unpredictably at that harbour where the lovers sheltered. Some call it the Ninth Wave, the wave of banishment that marks the boundary between home and exile and sweeps everything away. But the people of that land call it _Tonn Chlíodhna_ , “the wave of Clíodhna”, the rushing tide that appears without warning and howls, they say, when the death of the local lord is at hand and a time of change and transition is upon them.’

VIII.

As Juniper spoke the final word of her story, and came back into awareness of herself and her surroundings, she saw that the crew hand gathered around, listening in rapture. Though the ship still pitched a little bit, the sea had calmed and the thunder was only a distant, whispering rumble. Wise Child gave a little sigh of satisfaction at a story well told, and curled up under her blanket to wait out the rest of the storm in sleep.

As the crew settled down around them, Juniper stroked Wise Child's hair. She felt a sudden rush of love for the sleeping child, a sense of hope and certainty in the watery road they were following. She rubbed her hands across exhausted, salt-washed eyes, then tilted her face upwards to watch Wise Child's little bundles of herbs swing and sway from where they hung above her. The smell of mint and heather mingled with the sharper smells of the sea, and as Juniper's eyes slid closed, she thought she could feel the waves growing calmer.

IX.

The next morning, Juniper woke to find the blankets beside her unoccupied. She climbed the ladder out of the storeroom, and scanned the deck, but couldn’t see Wise Child scampering around behind her favourite crew members, nor standing silently beside Finbar at the rudder, as she often chose to do in the early hours of the morning. She was just beginning to get anxious when a voice rang out from far above:

‘Juniper! Branok took me up here in the mast, and I can see for miles! The sea is silver and blue from up here, not grey-green like it looks when you’re on deck. Declan said soon there would be ice in the water, but we haven’t seen any yet from up here, just endless miles of ocean.’

Juniper’s heart pinched to see Wise Child, a tiny, distant figure high above her. She’d tried to make the girl brave, and now she was fearless.

‘Oh, Juniper, look!’ Wise Child shouted, as she began to descend the mast. With a tumble, she was at Juniper’s side, pulling her towards the prow, pointing insistently towards the open ocean ahead.

Juniper strained her eyes for several moments, and then she saw what Wise Child had seen: seals, sleek and glossy in the water, swirling as they fed on a school of fish, emerging swiftly for air before diving into the depths. Wise Child gestured at the spectacle with utter joy, calling for Finbar, for Declan, for the rest of the crew to come and see. Juniper watched the seals, and thought of selkies, of women transformed. She thought of freedom.

**Author's Note:**

> The story that Juniper tells Wise Child in Part VII is a modified version of several medieval and modern Irish tales associated with the otherworldly woman Clíodhna. She appears in the _Dindshenchas_ ('Lore of Notable Places', a collection of Middle Irish stories designed to explain the meanings behind placenames in Ireland) tale associated with the harbour of Glandore in South Cork, as well as a pile of rocks known as Carraig-Chlíodhna (anglicised as Carrig-Cleena).


End file.
